Manus AI
Chinese-origin general-purpose autonomous agent launched March 2025 by Butterfly Effect. Operates in a cloud sandbox — browser, file system, shell. Went viral on launch with invite-only access; positioned as a Devin/AutoGPT competitor for non-coding tasks (research, ops, data analysis).
Active · Verified 2026-10-27 · fresh as of 2026-10-27 · 35 cited facts, 0 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Type
- General-purpose autonomous web/computer agent vendor fix
- Tier
- T2
- Section
- Agent IDEs & coding harnesses
- Latest release
- Manus 2.0 (2026-09-28) vendor fix
- License
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
- Pricing
- $39/$199/mo tier reportedly post-beta vendor fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-27 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- commercial vendor fix
When to use
Optimised for: autonomous web + file + shell tasks in a cloud sandbox
Anti-fit: not coding-specific; China-origin raises enterprise data-residency concerns for Western buyers
Pros & cons
Pros
Best-known general-purpose autonomous agent of 2025; cloud-sandbox model gives users a hands-off experience.
Cons
Invite-only access; China/Singapore HQ creates buyer hesitation for regulated Western enterprises; no public API at launch.
Claims & capabilities
Butterfly Effect; viral launch Mar 2025; reportedly raised $75M at $500M val in mid-2025 from Benchmark; invite-only access through 2025.
Technical surface
- API surface
- Web app + Manus Studio desktop app + Manus API v2 (REST: tasks, projects, agents, files, connectors, webhooks)
- Backend storage
- cloud sandbox state per session
- Deployment
- Cloud (browser app)
- Embedding model
- not applicable — not a memory product
- Multi-tenancy
- per-user cloud sandbox
- MCP
- searched not found
- A2A
- searched not found
- OpenTelemetry
- searched not found
Alternatives to Manus AI → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other agent ides & coding harnesses in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Claude Code (Anthropic) T1
Anthropic's agentic coding tool: Claude as a coding agent in the terminal, IDEs (VS Code, JetBrains), desktop app, web/mobile, GitHub and Slack. Context via CLAUDE.md, skills, hooks, subagents and MCP servers.
- Cursor (IDE) T1
AI-first IDE that forked VS Code; Composer (multi-file edit) and Agent Mode (long-running coding agent) are its flagship surfaces. Memory layer = .cursorrules / Rules; recall via repo-aware Context Engine. Anysphere (parent) raised $900M Series C at $9.9B in May 2025; acquired by SpaceX (announced 2026-08-14, terms undisclosed), product continues under the Cursor brand.
- OpenAI Codex CLI T1
OpenAI's actively developed OSS terminal coding agent (Apr 2025), now written in Rust (codex-rs replaced the original TS CLI); also IDE extension + desktop app. Separate from the Codex Web cloud agent and the retired 2021 Codex model API. The codex mcp-server command (Codex as an MCP server) was deprecated on 2026-08-24 and removed in CLI 0.154.0 (2026-09-09); OpenAI points integrations to the experimental Codex app server, and codex mcp still connects Codex to external MCP servers.
- Opencode (SST) T2
SST team's open-source terminal coding agent — TypeScript, multi-model, MCP-native. Released 2025; explicitly positioned as a permissively-licensed Claude Code alternative. Memory via AGENTS.md (the emerging cross-harness convention).
- Bedrock AgentCore (AWS) T2
AWS Bedrock AgentCore — managed runtime to deploy + scale + observe agents. Multi-component: Runtime, Identity, Memory, Gateway, Browser, Code Interpreter, Observability. Distinct from Bedrock Agents (older fixed-config product); AgentCore is the 2025 framework-agnostic runtime for any agent (LangGraph, CrewAI, Strands, OpenAI Agents SDK).
- GitHub Copilot (Agent Mode) T1
The original AI coding assistant (Copilot in editor; 2021). 2025 evolved into a full agentic surface: chat, completions, Agent Mode (multi-step), and Copilot Workspace. Backed by Microsoft. Distinct row from Workspace — this row covers the everyday in-editor + agent mode product, Workspace covers the hosted spec-driven workflow.
Sources (34 cited facts, 0 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is General-purpose autonomous web/computer agent vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Chinese-origin general-purpose autonomous agent launched March 2025 by Butterfly Effect.… vendor
- Claims / benefits Butterfly Effect; viral launch Mar 2025; reportedly raised $75M at $500M val in mid-2025… vendor
- Modalities text + browser screenshots vendor
- Created 2025-03 vendor
- Latest release Manus 2.0 (2026-09-28) vendor
- Mindshare Front-page HN launch (Mar 2025); covered by TechCrunch, The Information, FT vendor
- Funding $75M Series A reported (Benchmark + others) at ~$500M val · 2025-mid vendor
- Customers / scale Invite-only beta; reported tens of thousands of waitlist users vendor
- Pricing $39/$199/mo tier reportedly post-beta vendor
- Compliance Singapore/China entity — data residency unclear for Western users vendor
- Data handling Cloud sandbox; user sessions on Manus-hosted infra vendor
- Deployment Cloud (browser app) vendor
- HQ Singapore + China (Butterfly Effect) vendor
- Founders / pedigree Ji Yichao (CEO), Tao Zhang — formerly Monica AI / Butterfly Effect team vendor
- Memory volume / scale no scale claim vendor
- API surface Web app + Manus Studio desktop app + Manus API v2 (REST: tasks, projects, agents, files,… vendor
- Backend storage cloud sandbox state per session vendor
- Multi-tenancy per-user cloud sandbox vendor
- Encryption TLS vendor
- Namespace primitives per-user session vendor
- Contradiction handling LLM resolves (agent autonomy) vendor
- Validated verticals general-purpose autonomous agent — research, ops, browser tasks vendor
- Time to running <10min (sign-up; once invited) vendor
- Anti-fit not coding-specific; China-origin raises enterprise data-residency concerns for Western … vendor
- Optimised for autonomous web + file + shell tasks in a cloud sandbox vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure Anthropic Claude (reported) + OpenAI vendor
- Pros Best-known general-purpose autonomous agent of 2025; cloud-sandbox model gives users a h… vendor
- Cons Invite-only access; China/Singapore HQ creates buyer hesitation for regulated Western en… vendor
- Project & sources manus.im; The Information 2025 reports; TechCrunch vendor
- architecture-deployment-locus cloud vendor
- licensing-bucket commercial vendor
- positioning-platform-vs-product product vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
Related systems
References (2)
- Anthropic Claude (foundation models) depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: Anthropic Claude (reported) + OpenAI
- OpenAI GPT family (GPT-5 / GPT-4o / o3 / o4) depends on at runtime — adjacent-infrastructure cell: Anthropic Claude (reported) + OpenAI
Referenced by (1)
- LiteLLM integrates with — LiteLLM docs have a Manus provider page. (verified 2026-10-29)